Nazifying colonialism: settler colonialism and the fate of Germany's colonial chronotope

Dr Heinrich Schnee was among Weimar Germany's foremost colonial authors and agitators for the return of Germany's overseas colonies. An examination of Schnee's work and cultural milieu through the prism of Bakhtin's concept of the literary chronotope reveals the differences and similarities between liberals and Nazis on the question of colonies and empire in the interwar period. It also assists in explaining the complex interrelationship between the proponents of a global colonial empire and contiguous eastern expansion between 1918 and 1945. Despite the appearance of a seemingly polyphonic Nazi foreign policy, Schnee's irredentist demands for a global empire were never translated into war aims by the Nazi state, which found itself unable to realise its primary imperial goal of creating a German empire in Eastern Europe.